GEORGE ELIOT’S BRILLIANT PUNCTUATION MARK.

GEORGE ELIOT’S BRILLIANT PUNCTUATION MARK. In this article, Kathryn Schultz selects the punctuation mark that George Eliot uses to highlight the need to consider what our neighbor wants rather than what we would want in our neighbor’s place as one of the 5 best punctuation marks in literature. The calls it an “em-dash”. Here is the sentence it appears in: “One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea — but why always Dorothea?” The narrative and the moral argument turns on the em-dash. We have been looking at things from the point of view of the appealing heroine, Dorothea—and then the gears are reversed dramatically. Why not look at things from the point of view of the unattractive Casauban. Kathryn Schulz paraphrases: “Why always Dorothea? Why always one self? Why always one’s self?”